Thalidomide is easing my Crohn's disease

Scientists have found that Thalidomide - the drug responsible for severe birth defects in the 1960s - may be effective in fighting the debilitating inflammatory bowel disorder Crohn's disease.

Oxford University student Sam Freedman, 19, believes he has reaped the benefit of thalidomide's partial rehabilitation and credits the drug with his recovery. Here he talks about his illness.

When I was ten, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. I had been having a lot of stomach pain and diarrhoea for about two years and finally a biopsy revealed I had severe Crohn's.

Initially, doctors put me on a very high dose of steroids, which have an anti-inflammatory effect, and I went on a restricted diet to establish which foods I reacted badly to - and initially these things had an effect.

But over the next few years, I deteriorated. By the time I was 13, the bowel inflammation and the scar tissue on top of it caused by the Crohn's had got so thick that nothing could pass through my bowel, and I had surgery to cut out 12in of my colon.

For six months after the operation, I was better than I had been in a long time. But then, when I was 14, the same pattern of symptoms returned - only this time they were worse.

But by the time I was almost 15, I was pretty ill again, and doctors tried changing my medication, which was an exasperating matter of trial and error.

I felt in a way that I was a guinea pig - my doctors always had another new anti-inflammatory to try, but this time nothing seemed to help.

The next big treatment - which is the one I regret the most - is that they punctured a hole in my stomach and attached a feeding tube out-side so that they could give me an intravenous feed straight into my stomach.

The idea is that they give the bowel the chance to rest and then hope the inflammation will disappear.

After the operation, I was left with a long tube that hung out beneath my shirt. After a couple of months, they put in a smaller, less noticeable tube.

I had to be attached to a feeding pump every night. It pumped all the necessary nutrients into me.

Quite aside from the fact that it blights your social life - I couldn't eat - it was really frustrating, and the worst thing was that I was more unwell than I had ever been before.

After a year, I'd had enough of that - it wasn't working, and my parents and I and my doctors finally agreed that we needed to find something effective.

I have always been on steroids - because they have to wean you off them gradually. But once more they tried me on a variety of anti-inflammatory drugs and although they worked briefly, by the time I was 17, and half way through my A-level year, I was very, very ill and again almost at the blockage stage.

I had to be hospitalised and they gave me a steroid infusion - the most steroid they can give you - to try to stop the pain, but it failed to have any impact. I remember screaming with pain when I got cramps.

It was at that point that one of my doctors mentioned thalidomide. I knew about how thalidomide had affected babies years ago - and the thought that they might try it out on me was a massive shock. It was completely over-whelming.

My doctors, my parents and I carefully discussed the risks involved and how serious they might potentially be. Their big fear was that if I were to father a child while on thalidomide, it might have birth defects.

My doctors explained to me that they believed it could affect only women who took it within a two-week period in the very early part of preg-nancy and there was absolutely no proof that it could adversely affect men.

I decided the relative risks were fairly low for me. But my GP refused to prescribe it because it wasn't on her list of approved drugs.

She said it was a very powerful drug and she felt the prescribing rules for thalidomide were a bit ambiguous, so I had to collect my tablets from the hospital.

But it had an immediate and very dramatic effect. The only adverse side-effect I had was that it made me feel very drowsy.

Within six weeks, I was much, much better. It stopped my vomiting - which occurs with extreme pain with me. I still got some pain - but it was bearable.

I have had no side-effects from thalidomide. One of the things they test for is nerve-ending damage because it has been known to reduce sensitivity in nerves.

They put some pulses through the nerve endings in your feet to check that you respond as you should, and I was completely fine on that score when they tested me recently.

I have been on thalidomide for almost three years, and although it hasn't completely stopped me from flare-ups, it has made life much easier than before so that I have been able to lead a normal life.

In March, I am having a colonoscopy so that doctors can have a look at the bowel area.

My doctor in Oxford wants to start weaning me off thalidomide and I think what he will do is to start by lowering my doses.

I would love to get off it - but I am very wary of it, too, because I have been on drugs since I was diagnosed and it is hard to imagine managing without them.